Tag Results for balloon boy

It turns out that the Heene family wasn't the only group pulling the wool, however briefly, over the eyes of the media this week.

The Yes-Men, a group of liberal activists that recently put out a fake edition of the New York Post, managed to fool Reuters, CNBC, and Fox Business News into reporting that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had dropped its opposition to climate change legislation. The New York Times and the Washington Post online sites were apparently caught in the net as well, due to their systems for automated posting of stories on Reuters.

The elaborate hoax was extremely well planned, with a web site, a realistic-looking press release, and actors playing both officials of the Chamber and members of the media during a "press conference" at the National Press Club.

My question is: Aside from the obvious child-exploitation angle and the danger and expense associated with giving a false report to emergency officials, is the Yes-Men's hoax so different from what Richard and Mayumi Heene allegedly did?

Well, okay, I broke my own rules when it comes to believing the unbelievable.

Rule #1 "Everyone is lying and everything is intentional."  Not that I wasn't always skeptical and cynical, but I adopted this hard and firm position in January of 1990,  the day Charles Stuart jumped off the Tobin Bridge after convincing law enforcement and the media that he and his wife were victims of violent crime committed by an unknown black assailant.

Rule #2 -  "It's always the boyfriend or husband." Same goes for the Denver balloon boy episode. The story was concocted by the husband and father but it was carried out by the whole clan, including the wife.

While everyone is targeting Richard Heene,  I actually have a fantasy that I'd like to make chicklets of Mayumi Heene's smile. Just listen again to that 911 call where Mrs. Heene stereotypes her own nationality with her broken-English inability to articulate to an operator what's happening to her own son - even going so far as to tell the woman that her son is "in a flying saucer."

By the way, the unspoken hero of this whole affair is the 911 operator who stuck with the call despite her own skepticism.

As for referencing "Gawker" as the  news outlet complicit in this sorry affair; since when is Gawker a news outlet?

Yes, we should all be skeptical about checkbook journalism, and Gawker is right up front about having paid Robert Thomas, a former friend and would-be business associate of balloon dad Richard Heene (photo).

But if Thomas can be trusted, the picture he paints of Heene is devastating. Thomas portrays Heene as an increasingly paranoid, frantic man who believes shape-shifting reptiles are running the government and who would do anything to get on television.

The two had even talked about perpetrating a hoax with the balloon, Thomas claims, though getting one of the kids involved was supposedly not part of the original plan.

This story in the Denver Post only adds to the sense that it’s all about to fall apart.

Photo of Heene is from his MySpace profile.

When a Colorado family lost control of a helium balloon thought to be carrying their six-year old son, a life or death drama played out on national television . Or so we thought.  Six year-old Falcon Heene was never in the helium balloon that was tracked across the Colorado sky on Thursday afternoon.  Now there is family video of the balloon’s liftoff and some are questioning if this was a publicity stunt.